Note: This is an encore edition of Reader's Corner. The episode originally aired in March 2021.
In her latest novel, The Mountains Sing, author Nguyen Phan Que Mai tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.
Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.
Nguyen Phan Que Mai is the author of 11 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Born during the Vietnam War, she worked as a street seller and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. Today, her writing has been translated and published in more than ten countries, most recently in Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology.
